We need to decide on some quests for the village. Showing client stuff that doesn't fit in with the academy setting is needed here. Like the mail system (the ability to send/receive mail from (a restricted list of) NPCs would be nice here). Basic kill X monsters quests, retrieve Y from somewhere in the forest, etc. Quests relating to specific locations on the island (lighthouse, etc) would also be nice.

Then my view on how we should proceed: first lay out what we want from our content, do a wireframe of how to achieve that and then add the toppings (as in the story elements).

Tutoring aspects, variety and just plain old simple gameplay fun should be factors in these considerations. Also this approach is not the only way to do this, but when designing basic quest hub level stuff, IMO it is the good approach.

The first quest in WOA is going to be to ether choose to help a spy for the rebels or turn him in/kill him (along the way learning the basics of gameplay)... This decision determines which side you'll fight for (both sides are using this area to recruit people) and which city you'll be transported to (this also sets up the basic idea of the game)

TMW you need a good story, it makes coming up with quests so easy (or you can just gather crap in the woods or kill a rat)

Rotonen wrote:This can be hard if not impossible, but is there anything else to questing than "go kill a rat" or "go fetch me an utter triviality"?

"Protect a target" type of missions might be a good, but I guess they'd come into play later.

Escort missions are usually loathed because of the suicidal AI of the escorted NPC(s). They continue their path blindly without caring if the player has already cleared it or not.

I think we could make escort missions less frustrating by giving the NPCs a bit reasonability and make them only progress to the next waypoint of their route when
1. one of the escorting players is near the next waypoint
and
2. no aggressive enemies are near the next waypoint

We could also allow players to communicate with escorted NPCs and give them commands like "run for it", "go back" or "wait here until I tell you to follow".

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I don't want the tutorial area to be a storybook. I want it to be more of a "hey, this is how this works" type of an experience. This is why I'm pushing for the approach of "let's first define what we actually need for this content release". What this means is we design the tutorial content first, then retrofit a story to it and then go into filling in the rest of the area, starting from storyline. Keep in mind this approach is mostly for the academy content and for small parts for the other tutoring/informative parts of the island in question.

IMO we need to know what we're trying to achieve here before writing hours of dialogue for the player to suffer through before he can even attack the first thing in-game. There are extremes to this and neither end is a good solution. The golden road lies once again somewhere in the middle.

When you get into the actual game, of course, the storyline makes you immersed in the world.